Firearms analogies and settler colonialism in US nuclear deterrence strategy

Abstract

Nuclear strategy has long been formulated through analogies. We focus on one in particular: guns. Early nuclear strategists in the United States used multiple analogical comparisons to make sense of the new, apparently unprecedented technology that confronted them. They compared nuclear deterrence to gun dueling and the nuclear revolution itself to the rise of gunpowder on European battlefields. Both analogies invoked empire, in the form of American settler frontier gunfights and the impact of firearms on European expansion. This article offers a critical reading of them. We show both analogies were historically flawed, relying on outdated accounts of how firearms shaped military-political change. Our argument proceeds in three stages. First, we document the role of gun analogies in early US nuclear strategic writing. Second, we critically evaluate the analogy, showing its historical and analytical limits. Drawing on firearms literatures in history, sociology, criminology, and economics, we show that much of what we now know about firearms diverges from nuclear theory and history. Third, we develop an alternative interpretation, contrasting these analytical fictions with the actual history of nuclear colonialism.